


Sunflower

by BranHowe



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Wings, Gabriel (Supernatural)'s True Form, M/M, debriel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2020-01-01 00:00:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18324611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BranHowe/pseuds/BranHowe
Summary: When Dean sees Gabriel's true form for the first time, he can only compare it to the only thing he knows that looks the most like it.





	Sunflower

**Author's Note:**

> This story was created for the Debriel Creations Challenge Round 2.   
> Prompt Colours, Word Yellow

Dean knows that when Sam thinks of South Dakota, he thinks of Bobby. The first memory he had of the state was the junk yard behind his place. Not really the same for Dean.

For Dean, South Dakota equaled sunflowers.

Sunflowers rising far beyond the dark hood of the impala. Big enough to surpass his own father's head. Enormous enough to decidedly hover on top of his head like one of those incredibly tall buildings back at Chicago. Sunflowers surrounding the purring of the engine while the car made way through a dirt path, a tiny Dean looking through the backseat of the impala, holding his baby brother tight. Small chest going up and down, soft baby ruffles moving softly with the slight breeze that streamed from the driver's seat. 

His father turned to look at him, said something, asked something. Dean answered something back and his father gave in to laughter. An honest, booming, adult laughter that he didn't remember his father was capable of. John said something back to Dean and he had felt so small and overwhelmed. He held Sammy closer. 

The dream blurred slightly. He felt himself being pulled to the surface but not enough to be able to break the spell of sleep. He wanted to stay in the dream despite the strong arms surrounding him and the desperate voice calling for him. 

“Sam, Sam, it’s ok. He’s safe now.” 

A different person. Who was this person?

It was so hard to tell, the voice barely came through. Like someone calling to you out loud while you’re diving in a pool. He knew this voice, he knew these arms. He was safe. He barely registered his brother’s plea from the real world.

“But the spell...!” 

Not yet, Dean thought. The voices faded. He went back to tall sunflowers and baby Sammy. He went back to hug this soft bundle of clothes and baby scent. To these pouty baby lips and soft plush cheeks. To this miracle of life that was his baby brother.

“You have to grow up strong Dean, you’ll have to take care of him if I’m gone.”

Dean turned to look at his father, desperate, thinking of fire and darkness and rumpled blankets.

“But I don’t want you to go!”

“I know, I know. But we don’t know what will happen.”

Dean sniffled.

“Now don’t go crying on me young man. You’re the older brother. You’re gonna be your brother’s example.”

Dean sobbed.

“What was that?”

“Yes sir.”

Dean felt the trace of a tear slowly going down from both eyes and cooling his face until gravity did the rest. Sammy flinched when the first drop hit his forehead. That made Dean stop. He rubbed his face with his arm.

“You okay kiddo?”

Dean opened his eyes once more. There was someone by his side on the backseat. He knew this person but no matter how hard he tried, his memory of that sunflower filled day denied him the chance to remember this person’s name. It was too early. He didn’t belong to this place.

“Who are you?”

“I came to see how you’re doing. Sam is worried about you.”

“Sam is asleep.” Dean turned to look down at his bundle.

The man smiled sadly and raised a hand slowly to ruffle his hair kindly. There was a glisten on his eyes that Dean didn’t understand. He turned at Sam and softly caressed his cheek.

“Sam is really cute when sleeping eh?”

“Sam is always cute.” Dean said matter-of-factly, absolutely serious.

This made the man chuckle earnestly. The car came to a stop, a small cabin in front of them.

“Come on Dean, we’ve arrived.” His father turned to look at him around the seat. He ignored the man by Dean’s side and went to open his door. Dean turned towards the man.

“I have to go.” 

Gabriel nodded at Dean, he tried to help the kid with the door but even as a child he had his pride, he turned to open his door and carefully made his way out, treating his charge with the utmost care.

His father was now by his side, keeping the door open for him. Once Dean was out and dad had closed the door, he saw the man in front of him. Funnily enough, he had to look upwards to him. Not as high as his father but high enough. A sunflower behind crowning his head. He thought this was amusing but why was this funny though?

“Come with me Dean. You need to take care of Sam.”

“But Sam—”

Dean looked downwards, the bundle of clothes was gone. He frowned and looked upwards to the man once more. The sunflower yellow crown was slowly turning into a halo, the rest of the dream fading from existence into darkness. Dean squinted. The man’s hand stretched towards him while his body shifted into blazing light. 

“Come on Dean, wake up.”

Dean fidgeted for a moment while the man’s bright shape started to fade. Before long, Dean took his hand, holding it tight.

He opened his eyes. Sam was by his side looking at him in relief.

“Sam?”

Sam smiled. “Next time you want to play the hero I’ll fucking kick your ass.” 

Dean snickered mildly, he was still feeling sleepy but at least understood where he was.

“Yeah well, I wanted to know what it felt like to sacrifice myself for the princess.”

Sam punched him softly on the shoulder.

“Jerk.”

“Bitch.”

He made a go to sit on the bed while a glass of water was presented to him. He took it gratefully.

“What were you dreaming about?”

“South Dakota, first time we went there… You were so small...”

Sam smiled fondly, remembering Bobby’s home. 

After taking a bath and getting everything ready for departure, he opened the door of the dusty hotel in the middle of nowhere, Minnesota. Wide fields of sunflowers taking more and more land a block away from where they were right now in the middle of the day. The hunt had been during the night so he obviously had slept much more than what he thought.

Gabriel, Cas and Jack were by the Impala conversing softly before they all turned to meet Dean when they noticed him close enough.

“Ready to hit the road guys?”

Jack smiled broadly, Cas and Gabriel just nodded. All of them went to jump into the backseat while Sam opened up the trunk to throw in the duffels. The road back home was uneventful. Small chatter. How was Dean feeling? Was he alright? General reminder for everyone to be more careful next time. When they arrived Dean went straight to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee.

“It’s weird to see you drinking coffee instead of beer at these hours.”

Dean motioned towards the coffee machine asking Gabriel silently if he wanted some. Gabriel shrugged, Dean assumed he was taking it so he prepared him a cup. They sat at the table quietly. This wasn’t the first time Gabriel joined him for a drink to talk but he was surprised when Gabriel began to ask about his recent experience instead of just some random stuff.

“That memory of yours, it was right after your mother’s death?”

Dean felt a twinge of sadness hold the bottom of his stomach he turned his attention towards his cup.

“Probably... yeah. There was this cabin in South Dakota that belonged to an old acquaintance of dad. He rented it to us while we found a place of our own. It was close to Bobby’s town. Who knows, maybe that’s how dad eventually met him.”

Gabriel hummed and nodded, they went silent while drinking until Dean frowned slightly, reminding Gabriel of the almost toddler he had seen at the dream world.

“What’s wrong?”

“...I couldn’t remember your name.”

Gabriel waited, yes, he was actually able to wait. It was obvious that something else was bothering the hunter.

“I knew I had to know you. I knew that whatever your name was was right there in my mind but I couldn’t find it.”

“Is that what made you decide to come with me?”

“It was your halo… You were so bright and I was scared of you but I didn’t want to be left behind.”

“You saw me?”

Dean turned to look at Gabriel inquiringly. There was something about the way Gabriel had phrased his words that Dean had never heard on the archangel.

“Well, if you can actually call half squinting at a body of light ‘seeing’.” Dean jested. “Your halo was like the crown of the sunflowers behind you. I thought it was kind of funny.”

Gabriel paled for a second. Dean had actually seen him, his real form and it hadn’t hurt him at all. Was it because he was a true vessel?

“What? What’s wrong?”

“You weren’t supposed to look at me like that.”

“It was just at the end, you looked like you normally do while you were in the car… It happened when the rest of the dream disappeared.”

“You didn’t feel anything weird?”

Dean snorted

“Dude, I just told you I got fucking scared.”

Gabriel widened his gaze more.

“Dean Winchester, you are the bravest man I’ve ever met.”

It was now Dean’s turn to look startled. 

“What do you even mean with that?”

“You saw my true form. You saw what would have burned the eyes of any other human being and what made those few ones chosen to see recoil in fear. And despite that you still reached out to me. You are more special than what anyone would have ever believed.”

Dean flushed instantly and turned his sight away from Gabriel.

“Yeah well, it was either that or staying in the darkness and I didn’t want that.”

“Don’t be stupid Dean, it was your dream, you knew nothing bad would happen whether you held my hand or not. I was just egging you because Sam was literally all over me asking exactly when you were going to wake up.”

Dean snickered lovingly at the very palpable idea of a frantic Sam but shrugged the rest of the comment off. He didn’t understand why it bothered him so much to be called brave by Gabriel. For Dean it had been obvious why he had been scared, he didn’t want the light to leave, he didn’t want him to go. 

He didn’t want Gabriel to vanish once more.

Dean went blank for a second to look at Gabriel’s eyes it was now Gabriel’s time to ask what was wrong. Nothing, nothing’s wrong. Dean swallowed what was left of his coffee in one go before standing and rushing to the sink. Wash, rinse, dry. Cup back to the coffee table. Excuse me, I gotta do something else.

He rushed to the garage and busied himself giving his Baby a thorough cleanup. He was not going to finish today but he didn’t care. He just wanted to stay away from everyone, from Gabriel. Realizing how important the archangel had become in his life had been like a punch in the gut for him. 

By nine someone knocked the car’s hood to call his attention. He slid from below the engine to meet a head engulfed in a halo of white light, the wrong kind of light, proceeding from the lamps above.

“Have you seen the time yet? You gonna come down to eat or what?”

Gabriel was looking down on him, reminding him so much of the dream he had.

“Just a sec.”

Dean was sure Gabriel was the reason there was a feast of bacon burger and french fries waiting for him at the kitchen after he cleaned himself. He ate everything with little notice to moderation and humming with pleasure. Damn, the guy could definitely show off when he wanted. 

“Man your burgers are the best.”

Gabriel nodded at him, it wasn’t like he could actually say a thing with his own mouth full of fries.

Dean looked at him for an odd moment before going back to his food.

Time passed but it was obvious something was wrong. Gabriel had caught Dean looking at him like he had something on his face all the time and the worst part was that every time he called it out on Dean the hunter only gave him a sharp retort and moved away from him. Slowly, the archangel also began to feel bothered by it. By the end of the week they were effectively avoiding each other without even understanding why.

Sam and Dean went for groceries with their mom, everything went as usual until they hit the flower section and there they were again. Big, beautiful, warm yellow sunflowers. Dean grabbed the three larger ones in a whim and bought them along the rest of the stuff. If Sam or Mary found that extremely odd and out of character, none said a thing. Dean didn’t even realize he had bought them until he had them in a vase by the kitchen sink.

“Wow, look at those beauties! Such a saturated yellow really stands out against these concrete walls.”

Dean turned to look at Gabriel and before he was able to resist, he pulled him and made him stand between the sunflowers and him. They were so small, none was able to surround the archangel’s head like in the dream. Figures, it had been a dream after all. Dean sighed frustrated.

“...I should make you a crown.”

It took Gabriel more than a second before his eyes lit up in comprehension. The sunflowers, the crown, the odd looks. Dean was searching for the divine figure he had seen in his dreams.

“Sure Dean-o, I’ll be a King and you will be Queen.”

Dean snapped out of his trance and glared at him.

“Dean, stop it, you’re getting obsessed.”

“I’m not obsessed!”

“Then why did you buy the sunflowers?”

Dean went silent. He didn’t know. Or probably he did, actually, he did. He just didn’t know how to put it down in words.

“They are warm.”

Gabriel looked at him like he had just said the most stupid thing but still managed to go three shades of red.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Dean was still holding Gabriel’s arms, he knew the archangel would zap himself away if he allowed it.

“Gabriel”

Gabriel turned to look at him. This was it, the moment both of them had expected to happen. Some sort of confrontation none understood. 

“Let me see you again”

“What?”

“Please! I can’t… This is killing me! It’s like I’m looking at a mask of you all the time.”

“You can’t really be asking...”

“Just one more time!”

Dean was holding him tightly, a normal human being would have complained about the hunter being too harsh. Gabriel steeled his gaze and held Dean’s arms.

“You could get your eyes burnt.”

“I don’t care.”

Gabriel held an internal fight but considering how bad Dean had gone because of him he had no rights on denying him what he requested. He sighed in defeat.

“Alright, let’s go to the dungeon, I don’t want anyone to sneak on us.”

Locking themselves at the dungeon was easy, gathering the courage to actually confront each other once more was not. Finally, Gabriel dressed the doors with another set of sigils to avoid having Cas or Jack sneak in where the others couldn’t and turned towards the end of the dungeon. Once there, he held the hunter’s face and softly passed his thumbs over Dean’s eyelids mumbling something in enochian. Dean felt a funny tingling over his eyelids.

“Alright, open them up.”

Dean opened his eyes slowly to see once more the warm humanoid figure of light he had been desperately missing. There it was, the sunflower crown and the body. Slowly, he moved to touch Gabriel and it felt really odd. All the nerves of his hands told him he was holding Gabriel’s normal body but whatever Gabriel had done to awaken his senses had also made him feel the ripples of warm light of his true vessel. It was overwhelming, like having all your nerves hit by a bass speaker on it’s loudest volume.

“Well this is weird...” Gabriel muttered, he must have also realized there was something different about Dean’s touch.

“Does it bother you?”

“No, I mean, I’ve only felt this kind of touch with other angels, never thought a human could resonate like that.”

Dean couldn’t help but give him a nuanced smile “Is that a compliment?” 

“You wish” They smirked at each other.

How on earth was he able to tell where to smile at Gabriel was beyond his comprehension. Right now he understood why some of those old paintings of angels had them with eyes all over their body, it was like Gabriel’s entire body received information from every single point. He moved his hands towards his crown, doubting a moment.

“It’s okay, won’t hurt.”

He touched the crown and to his surprise it was almost like the petals of a real flower. Velvety and soft but in a vague way that reminded him that was he was looking at was not in the same plane of existence as the real world. He played with it for a moment until behind the crown he started to see something he had absolutely missed on his dream. 

Folded in rest, vibrating in shimmering soft light were Gabriel’s wings.

Before he realized what he was doing, he went forward to try and touch them. The bright figure stopped him with his hand. It felt warmer than a normal human being’s.

“No can’t do Dean-o, these are off limits to strangers.”

Dean turned to the place he felt Gabriel had his face. Was it just his imagination or the figure was sending out ripples of mirth? Was this Gabriel’s version of laughing?

“Why? You’re ticklish?”

The ripples stopped.

“No.”

“Hmmm…”

Dean plunged towards Gabriel’s wings and buried his digits between the feathers before Gabriel could react. Both men let out a startled exclamation when Gabriel fell backwards with Dean’s weight over him. Dean had expected to feel real feathers like the ones from a duster but it was more like passing a hand above a candle, you could feel each feather like a column of heat. 

Gabriel tried to put up some resistance by willing himself away from Dean’s touch and let out an annoyed grunt when he realized there was a very unwanted side effect of being grounded to reality while Dean held his vessel like that, even worse, he realized his strength was evened by Dean’s under such conditions. Dean pressed into the body of the wing, the closer he got to the back of the archangel the stronger the heat was but it still didn’t burn his skin. 

When Gabriel asked Dean once more to let him go his voice stammered a second with tickling, betraying him. With a shit eating grin Dean went on to relentlessly bury his hands in Gabriel’s wings, making him let out a laugh that Gabriel tried to immediately drown. They struggled for a while until Dean pressed somewhere close to Gabriel’s body and Gabriel let out a startled noise that Dean knew well from when a girl he was pleasuring was surprised by a movement she didn’t expect but really liked. 

“Dean, stop!” Gabriel hitched, hands reaching for the hunter’s shirt, pleading. This had definitely not been on the schedule.

Dean was sort of oblivious about it thinking he was chickening away until he noticed Gabriel’s ripples of mirth had turned to long but frantic undulating ripples of warmth. The hunter went completely red when he realized he was turning the archangel on and his hands fled away from him as if the feathers had suddenly burnt him.

“Fuck I… I’m sorry Gabe.”

He could now listen well to Gabriel’s altered breathing, moving to sit on his heels while giving Gabriel space to sit back. Once the archangel regained a bit of composure he took Dean’s face and passed his thumbs over his eyelids once more while whispering something in enochian. 

Once Dean opened his eyelids there was the usual form of Gabriel, albeit a bit tousled and with blushed cheeks. Dean felt a twitch of something on his gut looking at Gabriel that way. Without saying more, Gabriel stood up and snapped his fingers, erasing the protection sigils they had placed on the door and disappeared.

Things became downright awkward after that. The first days Gabriel literally fled away from any room Dean was entering. He had even left Sam talking to thin air twice. Dean on his side also began to avoid the places he knew Gabriel regularly used and sighed when he realized this meant also avoiding his Dean-cave. Thankfully, a couple of cases kept them busy and away from home but unlike until recently, that he had jumped into Baby at any chance, Gabriel just told them to give him a prayer in case they truly needed him.

When they arrived at the garage after that second case, Sam stopped Dean from getting off the car along Castiel and Jack.

“Ok, what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong ‘bout what?”

“You and Gabriel” Dean rolled his eyes but Sam pressed on. “Dean, I’m serious. It’s way too obvious and we cannot live normally if things keep on going this way. What on earth happened?”

Dean frowned and pondered for a second what to say to his brother. How could he possibly gloss over the fact that he got sort of intimate with an archangel?

“I fucked up Sammy, that’s what happened.”

“Okay but what did you do?” Sam could tell Dean’s distress, it definitely had been something embarrassing. He sighed. “Alright, don’t tell me. Is there a way you can make up with each other?” Another wince from Dean. “Dean, I’m trying to help.”

“I know! I know, it’s just that… Fuck Sammy, I don’t even know how to talk to him right now! How can I know how to make it up for what I did?” 

Sam looked at his brother for a long time but said nothing more. This was serious. Some hours later he sent Castiel on a recon mission to see if they could have better luck with Gabriel’s side of the story. Unfortunately the seraph came out with nothing but also commented on the fact that it probably was something personal, Castiel had never seen Gabriel act so uncomfortable about anything at all.

With as little information as he had, Sam had to get creative on they way they needed to solve this situation because even when it wasn’t a bad thing it made a dent in their everyday lives and he couldn’t have Dean with his mind wandering towards Gabriel in the middle of a case.

Two days later, Sam barged in Dean’s room, interrupting his laptop netflix binge. 

“Dean!!! Jack opened a weird box at the dungeon and there’s some freaky ghost like shit! Cas is helping us keeping it at bay but he needs your help while I find out a way to put it back!!!” 

“What!?” Dean jumped from his bed and grabbed his gun on the way out, running towards the dungeon. He passed Castiel at the frame of the door and went inside. “Where is it!?”

The heavy iron door closed behind with a slam, startling him. A turn of a key telling him right away he was trapped inside. 

“The fuck? SAM!?” 

“I’m sorry Dean! But you need to talk this out right now!” Came the muffled voice of his brother from outside.

“What are you talking about!?” Dean suddenly heard a frantic muffle from behind the moving cabinets. Was that..? He moved the cabinets aside and found Gabriel sitting on the dungeon chair, strapped to it with ironwork covered by enochian symbols, mouth covered with a piece of cloth. Panicking for a moment he went to unmuffle him.

“Gabe!? What the hell happened? What are you doing here?” 

“Your stupid brother drugged me! That’s why I’m here!”

“Hey! Sam’s not stupid!”

Gabriel bitchfaced him.

“Ok, ok, he shouldn’t have drugged you. Wait, lemme get you out of these shackles...” Dean began to search in his pockets for his tool set.

“I swear to Father you two are the worst… This ain’t funny at all! What? What’s up with the face?”

“I left everything at my room.”

Gabriel groaned in disbelief. “Seriously!? So what now?”

“I don’t know, I...” Dean’s face lit up in understanding and his shoulders went limp. He rubbed his face in frustration.

“What? You know what’s going on! Come on, spit it up!”

“We need to talk.”

“Talk?” Gabriel saw Dean going for a chair at the corner of the place. “Talk about what?”

Dean pulled the chair and sat in front of Gabriel but avoided looking at his eyes, a light blush coming up on his ears.

“Your wings.”

Gabriel’s eyes lit up in understanding.

“You gotta be joking” 

Dean rubbed his eyes and crouched over his knees. Sam had played them well enough. Sighing, he strapped himself for his favourite pastime, soul-bearing conversations. Gabriel caught up well with his movements. He snorted nervously.

“No.”

“No?”

“No! Nnnnope Nope nope nope! We’re so not talking about what happened with my wings!”

“Then what do we do!?”

“I don’t know! Lie! Use that gun of yours on these stupid things!”

“Gabe, they got us good! They will know if we made up or not! At least Sammy will and I cannot get you out of your shackles without his help! This is pure iron the bullets will only rebound!”

“Well I don’t care! Think something! I don’t want to talk about that!”

“Why not? It’s been a burden for all of us by now! At least let me apologize! It was an accident! I know it’s not like you actually wanted it after all!”

At these words Gabriel blushed wildly and turned as far away from Dean’s gaze as he could. Dean’s eyes lit up with realization. He turned blushing the other way around and rubbed his neck letting out a hushed “fuck” from his mouth.

Gabriel closed his eyes sighing, thinking mournfully that at least now things couldn’t get worse. Dean also sighed. A couple of minutes passed, both knew that eventually somebody would have to talk. Curse Sam for this.

“So what now?”

“Pretend it never happened.”

“Yeah, ‘cause we’ve been so good at that so far.”

Gabriel huffed a laugh and nodded at Dean. He thought he had been able to get over his crush for the hunter long ago and then the idiot went and did something like that. It was all his fault for being so easy on the eye. This sucked. Mayorly. Fuck you, Dean.

Dean sighed for the eleventh time that day. Ever since he had seen Gabriel in his true form on that dream he had been infatuated with him and he still wasn’t sure if it was just because of the divine element of the experience or because of what Gabriel meant to him now as a friend. It had felt truly intimate to be able to see him in a light no other living human had seen him.

Both of them also understood that they kind of missed their usual bickering from before. And Gabriel realized that his pride was not going to allow Dean to be the one person mature enough to admit to their feelings in this relationship. He was the older one after all. 

“Sigh… I miss you Dean.” The hunter turned to the archangel once more. “Can’t we go back to the way things were before?” 

Gabriel’s eyes met Dean for the first time during all that situation. Beautiful enormous pools of melted yellow gold pleading at him. Dean blushed and looked aside.

“I hope we could…” this was important, Dean had to face Gabriel even if it killed him. “But I really want to see your true self more…And just, maybe, somewhere more private than a dungeon?”

Gabriel had a hard time processing Dean’s words. Was he implying that he wanted to..? Okay, no, don’t get that excited, Gabe, you’re an archangel, there’s only so much face one can lose each day. He gave Dean a complicit look.

“That could be arranged.” 

Dean beamed, literally beamed. He jumped from the chair in a flash. “Great! Let me go get Sam. Bet he’ll let us out now.”

After that day and for a couple of weeks, Sam spent a considerable time fearing for his life ever since Gabriel implied he would think of a punishment good enough for the audacity of drugging and chaining him. Gabriel did nothing. Not only because he had promised Dean he wouldn’t but because seeing Sam flinch in fear was good enough of a punishment for him. Cas was also reprimanded albeit a little bit less. Thinking about it, maybe he would spell Sam’s eyes the same way he had with Dean’s just to see his face when he saw his lil’ bro’s true form for the first time.

Gabriel and Dean went back to the usual bickering. Dean hadn’t said a thing about wanting to see his true form once more but Gabriel knew the request would eventually come, Dean had not missed bringing bright yellow sunflowers in the bunker every time he could.


End file.
